


Corners and Rhythms

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-14
Updated: 2005-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elijah's fucking Dom, and Elijah's fucking Orli, and Elijah's fucking whoever he fucking well pleases, and it all signifies nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corners and Rhythms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kyuuketsukirui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyuuketsukirui/gifts).



Elijah's humming, a tuneless and vaguely funereal dirge, and Orlando tightens his hand on his hip again. It makes Elijah squirm back against him, and that's lovely, it is, but Orlando doesn't have much time to relish it. In a moment Elijah sits up, spiking a hand through his hair.

"Orli, man, did you see where the fuck my jeans went?"

Orlando never has any time to relish it, because Elijah's always leaving. He gets accused of being hyperactive himself; Billy once called him a flea in a fit, but he has nothing on Elijah. Elijah never slows down, even when he's just had his brains fucked out.

"Maybe over near the door? Or, wait, were you even wearing them when we got in here? We could've left them in the hall, or even the kitchen." He stretches out on the bed, hands behind his head, watching Elijah add to the chaos of his bedroom. It's an enjoyable view, since Elijah's not wearing a stitch, and he's mildly disappointed when Elijah finally stops cursing fluently and drags them out from under the bed.

Orlando snakes a hand out, grabbing Elijah's bony wrist, and keeps a hold on him while he finds his own jeans, struggles into them awkwardly, one-handed. "No slipping out yet, hey." He uses his hold to reel Elijah in close again, even though he's wriggling like an eel, and kisses him slow and soft until Elijah relents. Elijah opens his mouth to him with a little murmur at the back of his throat, and he kisses lazily, like he suddenly doesn't have anywhere else to be. Orlando knows better, but he lets himself fall for it anyway, lets Elijah insinuates his free hand into Orlando's back pocket, and presses back and trails his lips down the vulnerable slide of Elijah's throat, sucking, and ignores the faint marks already on it, the ones he didn't make.

 _Don't think don't think don't think_. Orlando's not going to bring him into this again. It's like fucking two people. He wills his mind blank, and makes Elijah murmur again. He wonders if Dom kisses him like this, if Dom -

No. Orlando concentrates on Elijah, warm and pliant and sharp-boned, and pressed up against him, but just as he's really getting into it, rocking a leg between Elijah's, Elijah bites his tongue.

"Fuck's sake!" Orlando yelps, leaping back. "What the fuck did you do that for?"

Elijah doesn't even make a pretence of being chastened, but grins at him, literally adding insult to injury. Orlando can taste blood now, just a hint, instead of Elijah. His wicked small teeth should be registered weapons.

"I didn't mean to bite you _hard_ ," Elijah offers. "Just enough to stop the making out before I let you drag me back to bed again. I've got to go. I've got something on tonight, and I need to get home and shower-"

"A normal person pulls away, Lij. He doesn't fucking _bite_."

Elijah shrugs.

Orlando continues glaring, but when it doesn't produce results, he lets it slip. "Hey, where do you have to be? Aren't you coming out with us tonight?" He slants a look at Elijah, who's looking suddenly very innocent and large-eyed, and yeah, that's a bad sign. Next he'll be studying his fingernails.

"No, I've got a date," Elijah says casually, leaning forward to kiss him, a little more gently this time. "Girl from Makeup. You know, the one with the thing?" He gestures vaguely in the direction of his nose. "But the others'll be there - wait, no, Sean won't be, will he? I think he said he was doing the quiet night thing when we were shooting before."

"C'mon, Lij, it's a day off tomorrow. What you really want is a good piss-up with us, admit it. Forget the girl." Orlando tries to sound charming and persuasive, but Elijah meets his puppy-dog eyes with raised eyebrows and an unconvincing attempt to stifle an amused smirk.

It's a lost cause. Elijah's mind is always so fucking hard to change. _It's just friends, but with fucking being_ the perfect example. He begins to raise his hands in surrender, and realises that he's still got hold of Elijah's wrist. "Um. Yeah, your hand."

"Can I have it back now?"

Orlando holds onto it for a moment longer, still slightly irked by the tongue-thing. He can still taste blood.

Short fingers, neat palm. He brushes a thumb across the palm, and watches Elijah's fingers curl inwards slightly, like an undersea plant. His fingernails are worse than ever, cuticles torn and bloody and pink nailbeds half exposed. "Lij -"

Elijah tugs his hand back sharply. "You're not my wife, Orli. Tell Dom I'm sorry I can't make it, okay?"

****

Orlando's standing at the bar, one hand tapping impatiently on the counter. Always in motion, Orli. Unusually for him, though, he's glaring at the harmless wooden countertop, and if looks could cause smouldery combustion…

Dom shoots a glance over his beer at Billy. Billy shrugs back, eyebrows rising. "Our wee elf looks like he's in a foul temper."

It's a statement of broad fact, but Dom can hear the unspoken comment. He ignores it, picking up his glass and downing the last of his scotch, but he can feel Billy's eyes on him. He'd have made a damned fine schoolmaster, Dom thinks, and wonders if he's already feeling the alcohol. One of those scary buggers who grin good-humouredly, totally insane, while wielding the ruler. He wipes his hand across his mouth. "Fuck it. Fine, Billy, I'll go talk to the git and see what's put a bee in his bonnet. Happy?"

"Fucking ecstatic," Billy says dryly, mouth quirking. "Get to it, then."

Dom sidles up to Orli just as the barman hands him a slopping glass.

"Dom," Orli acknowledges, and yeah, something's really ticked pretty boy off. There's none of the occasionally grating exuberance that his greetings usually involve. Dom eyes the glass.

"Bit stronger than you normally drink, mate."

Orli shrugs. "Don't feel like beer right now. I'm not such a lightweight as you all imagine, you know." His mouth twists, and he slams the bourbon back, choking as it hits.

Dom signals to the barman for one of the same. He tries to sound carefully non-committal. "Lij?"

"It's always fucking Elijah, isn't it?"

Dom laughs with him, trying to keep the bitterness out of his laugh. He succeeds no better than Orlando does. This is the first time either of them have, even obliquely, discussed it. Elijah's fucking Dom, and Elijah's fucking Orli, and Elijah's fucking whoever he fucking well pleases, and it all signifies nothing.

The barman gives Dom his own glass, but he doesn't touch it. He touches Orli's arm instead.

Orli slants a look at Dom, then reaches past him and steals his new drink. It takes him two swallows to get it all down this time.

"Fucker," Dom says, more out of habit than annoyance. "Mate, I think you should come and sit down with Billy and me. Over there, see? Bit more quiet." He pauses. Orlando's eyes are wide and owlish, and he's staring at Dom with his head cocked to one side, resting on his shoulder. And he's - fuck, that's definite listing.

"Er. Maybe I should drive you home. Orli? If you're this gone after two drinks, you are as much of a lightweight as popular opinion holds."

Orlando grunts. "Not two. Three. And the beers."

Dom rolls his eyes to the ceiling, and turns his head to grimace over his shoulder at Billy. "Christ. Yeah, home now."

"You're there when he kisses me, you know," Orli says suddenly. "It's never just him. You're right - _there_."

Dom grimaces. "It's not like we spend much time kissing, Orli-" No, it's all hard hands and teeth and hard sucking mouth and cock. Hard, and Dom never seems to get enough. "Fuck, we're not having this conversation." He stares into the smeary silver ashtray. He can see a distorted reflection of himself there, all rounded red nose, no matter how he turns his head.

Orlando's looking at him. He and Elijah are both too fucking pretty. Dom thinks that they must look like fucking art together, pale skin against golden, and -

Orli sways into him, so fucking close that he can smell the alcohol on his hot breath, and then Orli's kissing him, and for a moment Dom wants to shove him off, but then logic overrides the panic, and reminds him that he's in a metropolitan part of New Zealand, not Manchester, and instead he shoves Orli back hard against the bar and kisses the dark flavour of bourbon from his mouth. Something's burning, or maybe that's just the borrowed taste of bourbon, and Orli's mouth is hot and assured, tongue finding all these corners and rhythms; Dom sucks on it, and Orli moans and grinds against his hip, and Dom has to stop, stop and pull back.

"Dom -" Orli begins, breathing hard, and Dom turns on his heel.

"C'mon. Got your wallet?"

Orli follows him over to Billy's table, dogging his footsteps like a good little puppy, and Dom grabs his jacket and smiles sort of apologetically at Billy. "I'm going to take Orli home, Bills. He's had a few. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

Billy smirks knowingly at him, eyes glittering pale green. He raises his glass slightly, and Dom tries not to redden - could his face get redder? It's been on fire, he's on fire - and grins lopsidedly back.

****

Dom sags on top of him, and for a few minutes it's quiet, save the harsh sounds of their breathing and the droning distant hum of cicadas outside. The fan whines a little as its blades rotate on the ceiling. Summer in New Zealand, even at midday, may not be as fucking stifling as in L.A, but it's trying.

Elijah wishes Dom would get the fuck off already. He'd be deadweight under normal circumstances, but the dull heat makes Elijah feel like the room's full of steam, not air. Sex in a sauna, what a fucking brilliant thing, providing you want to know exactly what it feels like to be boiled alive. Dom's room might as well be a sauna. Orlando's place would be cooler, on the waterfront. Sea breezes, beach, all that shit. He should go over. Maybe suggest some sort of party night, group hang, then contrive a reason to meet Orli in the kitchen and fuck bent over its cool, shiny marble benchtops. It's more electric when Dom and the others are right next door. He really wants Dom to sit in Orli's messy living room, knowing. Stewing over it. Elijah's head hurts.

Sweat's cooling on his legs, shoulders, the parts of him not currently covered by Dom. The parts that are truly do feel boiled. Even if Dom does get off, Elijah suspects that he'll be too jellied to move.

He runs a hand gently through Dom's damp hair, darkened to brown. Dom raises his head from Elijah's shoulder, face very close, and smiles. Wide, 'fuck, that was a good shag' grin of camaraderie. The corners of his eyes crinkle with it.

"You're fucking Orli," Elijah says, and his voice sounds flat even to him. He stares back at Dom, like he's never before really studied the angle of his jaw before. Dom's close enough to him that he can feel his breath unpleasantly warm and moist on his face, and if he moved forward, upwards, the barest fraction, their mouths would touch.

Dom returns the look, sex-heavy eyelids making his eyes look slate-blue, more slanted than ever. Elijah briefly has the weirdest sensation that he's looking for something, god knows what. He raises his eyebrows and glares back. They're still melded together with sweat and semen and the weight of Dom's body.

Dom snorts and looks away, finally, levering himself up from Elijah. Elijah wants to protest, despite the heat, but then Dom's wriggling down until he's lying between his legs, resting his head on Elijah's thigh. Elijah's glad, really, that he's not staring at him anymore. People complain when Elijah opens his eyes really wide and stares at them for the express purpose of freaking them out, but there's something about the way Dom looks at him sometimes that makes his attempts pall.

"So I'm fucking Orli, yeah. And? You're fucking him too, Lij," Dom says, casually enough. His breath's tickling Elijah's inner thigh now, and ghosting over his balls. His dick, completely without Elijah's fine-honed sense of dramatic timing, twitches with reawakening interest.

His stomach, conversely, seems to be clutching coldly at itself. It's been doing that since they all met for brunch. Billy had leaned over his fucking plate of bacon and eggs and let slip that Dom and Orli were - doing what they were, and Elijah felt sick. He should've known better than to get within smelling range of bacon with a hangover and queasy stomach like earlier.

"But you knew that," Elijah points out. Calmly. "It's not like Orli and I screwing is a secret, or anything." Elijah hates that that sounds unsure, and defensive, and really fucking inadequate. It isn't, Dom knows the score - inasmuch as there is a score - and, really, Elijah doesn't want to dwell on this.

"No, that it's not," Dom says, trailing his tongue absently over the crease of Elijah's hip, licking the salt away. His tone is neutral, thank holy fuck. "It's not a 'big deal', is it? You keep talking about friends just fucking around, and all that, _dude_." His attempt at Elijah's accent isn't particularly accurate. He sounds peeved, but not, Elijah decides, honestly pissed. If he was, he wouldn't be applying his tongue and the blunt press of his teeth to Elijah's hip.

His eyes feel weird and prickly. Maybe he should've taken the contacts out first. Fuck this.

Elijah reaches down, slowly - his bones have honestly turned to fucking rubber, Dom's fucked him until he's only marrow - and presses the back of Dom's head, trying to guide that tongue slightly lower. It's not quite a caress. "Less talking?"

Dom grunts. "Don't you _ever_ -" he begins, and then huffs slightly, dismissing it.

Elijah slumps back onto the pillow, shutting his eyes and focusing on the warm mouth starting to tease his dick. Dom's dropped whatever the fuck he was on about. That's good. He needs a cigarette kinda fucking badly right now, and it may be a breach of blowjob etiquette, but he twists and fumbles along the top of the nightstand until he finds the familiar carton and, then, the plastic sheen of his lighter.

****

Dom brushes his hand down Elijah's ribcage, soft as a whisper. Elijah shifts slightly, but doesn't wake up. His kitten hair is damp and darker brown at the temples, and his mouth is pink and fallen a little open. His fingers are still curled, anemone-like, around his garish Bic.

Dom traces older, faint bruisemarks left on Elijah's pale hip. He didn't leave them. Orlando did, and Orlando's eyes flash dark and brilliant in his memory. He's laughing. He's always laughing, beaming, long hands waving. But Dom's seen, hasn't he, Orli's face pinched and desperate and needing as Dom looked up from his cock.

The cicadas start up their tuneless chorale again while he considers Orli.

Elijah makes a small sweet sound in his sleep, shifting warmly under Dom's fingers, and he can't, quite, bring himself to pull his hand away.


End file.
